


A Brother To Wolves

by spellwing777



Category: Watchmen - All Media Types
Genre: Cannibalism, Rorschach is terrifying, Werewolves, holloween, kinkmeme fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-09
Updated: 2015-05-09
Packaged: 2018-03-29 18:47:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3906802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spellwing777/pseuds/spellwing777
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A fill for the request on the <a href="http://watchmen-km.dreamwidth.org/287.html?thread=19231#cmt19231">7th kinkmeme</a> for a scary Halloween story. I...think I delivered.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Brother To Wolves

He’d felt Rorschach lurking in him since he was little.

It wasn’t until two older boys had yanked at the long, trailing chain that led down into the black, dank depths that he’d become aware of the _other_ sleeping there. Their jeers and shoving had dredged it up; and before he knew it there was the sizzle of a cigarette in one boy’s eye, and he was down on the other, biting and _biting_. He could taste the copper of blood in his mouth, and his jaw ached; like the bones in his face wanted to split and open _wide_ so his tiny mouth would be a gaping maw that could take in the boys face, the boys _head_ , so he could open wide and _swallow it all._

But it couldn’t. It was too big for him. His body was too small.

There were screams around him now. People pulling him off and the sounds he made were inhuman.

“Hold his _arms!_ Hold his _arms_!”

“Outta be locked _up_. See him biting that-”

“Like an _animal_. Like a mad _dog_ -”

“Exactly like a _mad dog_ -”

\---

When he made his face, it felt like the darkness that he’d touched when he’d mauled those boys arched up, came closer. It itched under the skin, stretched his bones; always there but never quite satisfied. Close, but never touching. Still, he could breathe in the residual strength and ferocity; and when the world seemed to crush them under its loathsome weight, bearing Nite Owl down, it only fueled him. The sting of his fists on screaming criminals lessened the ache, but it never completely went away. 

_I wasn’t Rorschach then. Then I was Kovacs. Kovacs pretending to be Rorschach._

He wished it would just break over him; split open and relive the ache like an abscess being drained, so he could stop being pathetic Walter and finally be _Rorschach_. But his body was still too small. His body would not be grown enough to become Rorschach until a fever-warm, summer night.

He’d come to the back fence, and spotted the dogs. They had smelled him at the back fence, and had sat down without being ordered too, letting him pass unmolested. He’d always had a kinship with dogs; none of them would growl at him, or bite, or snap. No one had ever understood it, he hadn’t understood it either, but he felt in good company among the malformed wolves; that they and he were both just animals.

He went inside, and found the fabric fluttering in the coals. The shining tools. The scored cutting board. He looked out, and saw the knob of bone resting in the gravel, where the dogs had dropped it. They stood by it like bookends, like guardians, and finally he understood what lurked beneath his skin.

_Was reborn then._

_Was Rorschach._

This time, the bones in his jaw cracked and grinded until they were big enough to take in the face. The head. His ribs spread so his belly could swallow the meat. When he finished, the ache that had followed him all of his life was gone, and he was reborn. He stepped outside.

The two dogs were waiting for him, frozen statuesque; sitting on their haunches. He bent down to them and they came to lick the blood from his jowls; tails tucked, teeth pulled back, all submission and appeasement. The fat, lumbering ape that had kept them was just an owner; they owned no fealty or love to him. But this was a MASTER; finally come to demand their obedience, and they simpered and begged to be possessed. 

When he lifted his head and strode away, they followed. 

\---

His landlady had yelled ‘dogs aren’t allowed’ at him, standing at the bottom of the black, dank stairwell; flanked by his two companions. He’d lifted his head and smiled up at her, the single bulb at the top of the stairs reflecting green in his eyes; like the shine of predatory eyes in the dark. She tried to hide the flinch and imagine it away; but she was glad nonetheless when he carted off his possessions.

Rorschach toke up residence in the abandoned shop; and put the tools and scored cutting board to his own uses.

\---

Nite Owl begins to avoid him.

He whined about his brutality, his callous indifference to whether or not the criminals they found lived or died. He did not know what happened to the ones he found when he patrolled alone. He did not know that their meat sat heavy and satisfying in his belly; that he took packages wrapped in bloody butchers paper to the abandoned dress shop, to feed his fellow wolves torn strips of still-warm flesh.

Perhaps he recognized, subconsciously, the beast that walked beside him; hidden under flimsy skin. Perhaps Daniel’s lizard brain saw him lean in out of the corner of his eye to smell the blood humming in his veins. Perhaps he realized it on some level, and feared it; because there were beasts under all of their skins. His just rode closer to the surface.  
Their gap yawned between them; a deepening fissure. At one time it would have bothered him. At one time, he would have been horrified at what he was becoming; at the ‘atrocities’ he’d committed. But that was when he’d been so much smaller, playing at being Rorschach; and the cracks in his psyche had started years ago, until Rorschach had finally broken through them.   
But when Daniel had told him that he was retiring, his weak, trembling words piercing his ears, he was angry. Daniel was his. He was not allowed to leave. He told him as much, but Daniel just turned his back on him, a deep frown on his face. That was a mistake. You never turn your back on a predator.

His scream was loud, but he would be quite soon. With Daniel pinned under him, Rorschach remembered the frightening dreams that had tormented Walter; featuring him and Daniel doing perverted, disgusting things. They dreams were like the one of The Beast with Two Backs, and finally he understood. Daniel would meld with him, and he would never leave.

His jaw cracked, and his face split wide to swallow him all.


End file.
